The Hagewoods are dear friends of mine.  I first meet Hunter and Lori shortly after they were married and moved to Knoxville.  Hunter had come to UT to get his MS degree in Computer Science. Their son Mathias was born during the time they lived at the Christian Student Center.  It wasn’t long before they moved to Brazil to join Lori’s brothers doing mission work in João Pessoa.

If you know me pretty well, you know that I’ve been to Brazil several times over the past 6 years.  The majority of that time has been spent in João Pessoa.  The Hagewoods have always been welcoming and letting me stay with them.  They had come up for a month or so to spend some time visiting friends and family.  A couple of those weeks were going to be spent in Knoxville.  So when Lori asked if I could do some family photos and some photos of the kids, I was more than willing to try to fit them into a pretty hectic schedule at the time.

Last Sunday evening I did a bridal session with Stephanie out at Concord Park and in the town of Concord, TN.  The town of Concord is not an area I normally hear about when people discuss photo locations, so I might have just let out a big secret.  I was really hoping to get some spectacular sunset shots when I planned this session, but the weather doesn’t always cooperate.

I’ve been shooting sports almost exclusively this year, so it was a nice change of pace to do some engagement photos for Stephanie and Wade.  I will be shooting their wedding here in Knoxville in June. Stephanie was referred to me through another photographer friend who will becoming a dad right around the time of their wedding.  This was the first chance I had to meet Wade. We started out at the UT Gardens and then proceeded to World’s Fair Park and Downtown Knoxville.  I had one very special request for a photo.  Both of Stephanie’s grandparents have recently passed away.  After 55 years of marriage, it only took 20 days for them to be reunited. I still have a bit of editing to do, but here’s a few that I wanted to get up as a sneak peek.

A few weeks ago, I did a session with David and April Watson and their children. We started out at the UT Gardens and then afterwards they invited me to their home and we finished out the session there. While at the gardens, the children just wanted to run around the gardens. I did manage to get them to stop for some very brief seconds to pose for some pictures. I had a tough time choosing only 10 photos to post to this blog, so I can only imagine the kind of troubles David and April had in getting their order together.

This session was another one of those last minute deals that just came together. Mark is the preacher over at Laurel Church of Christ. His wife Robin is very involved with the ladies ministry over at Laurel. They have two grown sons, that both happened to be visiting at the same time with their wives. Robin was wanting some new updated portraits to hang around the house and wanted to know if I could do some after church the next day. Well the weather was still off and on rain, but it was supposed to clear it up later in the afternoon. Having been to their house before, I knew their back yard would be a nice setting to do them.

They had just as much fun, if not more, with it as I did. Here’s just a tiny selection from that afternoon.

Update:

I did this session back in July of 2009.  Later that year Mark Smith was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  In December, doctors performed the operation to remove the tumor.  You can get his full story over at the Caring Bridge website. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/marksmith1.  The paper I string for, The Shopper-News, did an article about him in the January 4, 2010 edition on page A3.   I also know that on February 8, 2010, WBIR’s Beth Haynes is doing a story on him on Live at Five at 4.